


Posteri-Art

by pamdizzle



Series: Drunk!Jim’s Finest Hours [1]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Fanart, Gen, Harvey Bullock Mentioned, Humor, M/M, Missing Scene, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Tattoos, drunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 12:24:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16853920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pamdizzle/pseuds/pamdizzle
Summary: Jim takes a night on the town, ends up drunk and wandering...all the way into a tattoo parlor.





	Posteri-Art

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still working on the next chapter of Fake Dating, but I did this flash fic on Tumblr and figured I would move it over incase my blog gets the boot lol. I have no idea what to expect on that front, but I want all my work in one place all the same. Art in the fic was done by the amazing DeathbyOTPin123. I love you, man! <3 
> 
> I will write a follow up eventually. <3

Its 3am, Jim’s on a bender with Harvey, or he had been. Harvey ditched him around an hour ago, tired of Jim’s pity party. It’s not his fault, okay? He’s been trying to do good, but fuck. Lee’s a bank robber now, Barbara’s basically running a cult and his last girlfriend duped him into handing her the city on a goddamned platter all because Jim was too fucking lonely to see it before it was too late.

And now, Penguin’s in Arkham, and the city is no safer—in fact, it may have actually gotten worse—and that’s on him. Penguin is on HIM.

Well, not literally. Jim giggles as he leans against the wall. He could have been; maybe he shoulda been on Penguin. He shoulda…

A light blinks, just above his head, and Jim squints, rubs his eyes sleepily. “Fuck,” he groans. “S’fuckin’ too bright, piece’a shit—”

“Ey! Get the fuck off my window if you ain’t gettin’ work, jackass!” Someone shouts from his left.

Blearily, Jim turns his head to see a man, bald as Zsasz, but tatted all the way up his bare arms, across his shoulders, along his neck to the crown of his head. Jim giggles again because he loves tattoos, it makes his job so much easier when it comes to identifying a perp.

“Tattoos’re so great,” Jim tells the man cheerily.

“Yeah, they’re pretty fucking special,” tattoo guy replies. “You comin’ or goin’?”

Jim purses his lips, thinks about the guys in the service with USMC stamps and pushes himself off the window. He ambles toward tattoo guy, and nods.

“Yeah,” Jim says, “think I’m comin’.”

Tattoo guy snorts. “Lucky you, I got an open seat. You got any idea what you want?”

Jim licks his teeth, eyes the art on the wall. The guy’s good, and Jim tells him so which seems to make him a little less annoyed. “S’hard t’choose though.”

“Kind of shit you into, man?” Tattoo guy asks as he sets up his tools near a chair at the front of the parlor. “You like dogs? We can do you a mean ass bull dog tat, man. Or a fucking skull with some gnarly teeth.”

Jim frowns. “I dunno…maybe—” His eyes alight on a sample image that stops all trains of thought. “S’that a penguin?”

“Probably. You like birds?”

“Ah, man,” Jim drunkenly laments. “I used to have a Peng’in. He…he was an…ass. But y’know, the more I think ‘bout it, the more m’thinkin’ maybe I wasn’ so nice. I forgot that it can ah’ways be worse.”

“So…you want the penguin?” Tattoo guy strides behind the counter to snatch the image from its frame on the wall. It’s a little cartoony, wearing a top hat and all, but it’s cute and Jim finds himself chuckling, because…

“Y’know what?” He grins. “I do. I never thought I’d say it, but I miss ‘im and tha’s crazy, right?”

Jim plops himself into the chair as tattoo guy responds, “Wild animals are hard to tame. Did yours have any distinguishing features?”

He sniggers. Oswald’s eyes are pretty distinguishing, his hair too, but….

“He has this thing…’bout umbrellas,” Jim tells him. “S’got a collection or somm’in.”

This finally gets a chuckle from tattoo guy. “How about we give this guy an umbrella then?”

“Purble,” Jim blurts. “S’favorite color.”

“You got it. Where you want him?”

—

Three hours later, Jim walks out of Mike’s Body Art with a bandage on his ass, and a creeping sensation of cognitive dissonance.

—

He wakes up the next morning, sore and hung over, legs tangled in half-discarded pants and untidy bedding. There’s drool on his cheek and he absently wipes at it as he rolls over. It’s a mistake, one he instantly regrets.

“Ow, fuck! What…” He swipes a hand down toward the pain, fingers encountering surgical tape and a large square bandage. “What the hell?”

With a creeping sense of unease, Jim gingerly frees himself from the bed, kicking his pants the rest of the way off in the process. There’s a hazy memory of a blinking light and an uncomfortable chair, but there aren’t too many reasons to have a bandage on one’s ass. Maybe he finally got that Marine Corp badge, though he’ll catch major shit from his service buddies if they ever find out where he put it.

He hopes whoever did the art was talented at least, that the letters are neat and blocky. He’s gotta piss like a race horse, so he does that first. Takes care to wash his hands, doesn’t want to risk infection. Hopefully the artist gave him a care packet. Either way, by the time he’s stood in front of the full-length mirror on the bathroom door, Jim’s almost eager to see it.

It’s something he’s always thought about, but never actually fully committed to getting done. Carefully, he peels away the mysterious bandaging on his left butt cheek, his anticipation quickly giving way to panic.

“What…oh, no.” Jim’s mind is abuzz with static, his lip bitten nervously between his teeth to keep from screaming his horror. The bandage is still mostly on, but Jim can see it all too clearly—a cartoon penguin in a top hat and bowtie, leaning on the handle of a purple umbrella, smug smile and all.

“What the fuck did I do?” he muses aloud, carefully re-adhering the bandage. He rubs a frustrated hand over his face, turning on the tap to splash some cold water against his flushed skin.

Jim glances at his reflection, his expression clearly displaying his exasperation. He blames Harvey—

Oh God. Harvey. Jim swallows.

Harvey can never know. No one can ever know. He will take this goddamned secret to the grave even if that means never having sex with the lights on again. He leans onto the rim of the sink, looks himself in the eye and swears and oath.

“No more fireball. Ever.”


End file.
